Micromachines 2012, 3, 36-44; doi:10.

3390/mi3010036
OPEN ACCESS

micromachines
ISSN 2072-666X
www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines
Article

Design of an Angle Detector for Laser Beams Based on

Grating Coupling
Tapas Kumar Saha 1, Mingyu Lu 1, Zhenqiang Ma 2 and Weidong Zhou 1,*
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, USA;
E-Mails: tapaskumar.saha@mavs.uta.edu (T.K.S.); mingyulu@uta.edu (M.L.);
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
WI 53706, USA; E-Mail: mazq@engr.wisc.edu

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: wzhou@uta.edu;

Tel.: +1-817-272-1227; Fax: +1-817-272-7458.

Received: 24 December 2011; in revised form: 21 January 2012 / Accepted: 21 January 2012 /
Published: 1 February 2012

Abstract: A novel angle detector for laser beams is designed in this paper. It takes
advantage of grating coupling to couple the incident light into a slab waveguide; and, the
incident lights angle can be determined by reading the outputs of light detectors within the
waveguide. This device offers fast-responding on-chip detection of laser beams angle.
Compared to techniques based on quadrant photodiodes or lateral effect photodiodes, the
device in this paper has far greater detectable range (up to a few degrees, to be specific).
Performance of the laser angle detector in this paper is demonstrated by finite-difference-
time-domain simulations. Numerical results show that, the detectable angle range can be
adjusted by several design parameters and can reach [4, 4]. The laser beam angle
detector in this paper is expected to find various applications such as ultra-fast optical
interconnects.

Keywords: diffraction gratings; guided waves; laser beam steering

1. Introduction

Precise tracking of laser beams has innumerable applications, including but not limited to
lidar, chemical/biochemical microsystems, microscopy, optical tweezers, telescopes, satellite
communications, and optical interconnects [1,2]. Among these applications, in recent years optical
Micromachines 2012, 3 37

interconnects have attracted enormous interests particularly [35]; and, fast on-chip optical beam
detection/tracking/steering techniques are expected to play critical roles in the next-generation optical
interconnects [68]. The most traditional laser beam detection techniques rely on mechanical
steering [9,10]. Although mechanical steering provides broad range of angle detection, it leads to
systems that are bulky, complex, costly, and slow. Various contemporary applications (such as optical
interconnects) call for low-cost, fast-responding, and on-chip devices for precise beam detection.
Quadrant photodiodes (QPDs) may be the most popularly adopted for the purpose of on-chip beam
angle detection [11,12]. Other approaches for laser beam angle measurement include lateral-effect
photodiodes (LEPs) [13] and dual focus Fresnel lens [14]. Nevertheless, the angle detection methods
in [1114] share one drawback: they can only detect very small angle variations up to 3 mrad or
0.2 degrees.
In this paper, a novel angle detector is designed based on grating coupling. It consists of a grating
layer on top of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) slab waveguide. The incident light is coupled into guided
modes within the waveguide via the grating layer, and then, the incident lights angle can be
determined by reading the outputs of light detectors within the waveguide. This device offers
fast-responding on-chip detection of laser beams angle, without requiring any external objective lens.
Its detectable angle range can reach a few degrees, which is far greater than those associated with
QPDs or LEPs. Performance of the laser angle detector in this paper is demonstrated by full-wave
finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) simulations. Numerical results show that, the detectable angle
range can be adjusted by several design parameters and can reach [4, 4]. It is noted that grating
coupling was applied to laser angle measurement in the past. For instance, in [15] laser angle was
measured based on the spatial variation of the coupled light. Since the measurement precision is
dictated by the number of photodetectors placed along the transverse direction of the waveguide, the
device in [15] takes large real estate (around 3.5 mm) in order to measure angles up to 1 degree
accurately. As a comparison, the detector in this paper only employs two photodetectors and is highly
compact: the width of our coupler could be as small as 20 m (depending on the integration density)
with measurement range of 4 degrees.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The grating-based angle detector is described in
Section 2. In Section 3, some numerical results are presented to demonstrate the devices performance.
Finally, Section 4 relates to our conclusions of this study.

2. Design of the Angle Detector Based on Grating Coupling

Schematic of the grating-based angle detector is depicted in Figure 1. It is completely planar and
composed of four layers. The top layer is grating layer, which consists of N grating elements. The
grating elements are considered uniform and infinitely long along y direction in our modeling; and,
they are deployed periodically along x direction with periodicity . The grating layer sits on top of an
SOI slab waveguide. A laser beam with frequency finc is incident onto the device from the top. The
incident direction is in the xz plane. The angle between the incident laser and z direction (i.e., surface
normal direction) is denoted as inc. When the laser is incident obliquely, inc takes positive values
when the incident laser is along +x direction and inc is negative when the incident laser is along x
direction. Our device is designed such that the incident light is efficiently coupled to the +x traveling
Micromachines 2012, 3 38

mode and x traveling mode in the slab waveguide. When inc = 0 (that is, normal incidence),
+x mode and x mode in the slab waveguide are equally strong, due to the geometrical symmetry.
When inc 0 (that is, oblique incidence), the +x mode and x mode are unbalanced. As a result,
inc can be found by comparing the +x mode and x mode. In our device, the +x mode and
x mode are observed by placing two detectors in the slab waveguide. The two detectors are named
+x detector and x detector, respectively. The +x detector is placed to the right of the grating
structure and it serves to detect the power of the +x mode; similarly, the x detector is placed to
the left of the grating structure and it detects the power of the x mode. The photodetectors in the
waveguide can be implemented by following available architectures in [1618].

Figure 1. (a) The device schematic. (b) The cross-section view in the xz plane.
Incident laser beam
@ frequency finc Incident laser beam
y Grating layer @ frequency finc
inc (with N elements)
z z
Slab inc
waveguide -x mode tg +x mode
s
x

x
Box layer twg tb
Box layer

Silicon substrate
Silicon substrate

(a) (b)

In Figure 2, typical spectral outputs of the +x detector are illustrated with various inc values. In
our design, the incident light is coupled to the waveguide modes via the second-order Floquet mode
predominantly. Consequently, transverse resonance occurs when the following condition is satisfied
2
kinc sin inc + 2 = k xwg (1)

In the above equation, kinc = 2finc/c, c is the speed of light in free space, and kxwg is the wavenumber
along x for the fundamental guided mode in the slab waveguide. It is noted that kxwg is non-linear with
respect to the frequency. The transverse resonant frequency for inc = 0 is denoted as f0. The
transverse resonant frequency increases with the increase of inc, as shown in Figure 2. Bandwidth of
the resonance is measured by finding the frequencies at which the photodetectors output drops by
3 dB with respect to the value at the resonant frequency. Further, quality factor is defined as the ratio
between the resonant frequency and the bandwidth.
In our design, f0 is chosen to be close to finc and greater than finc; and, the offset between f0 and finc is
characterized by
f0 finc
f = (2)
f0
Micromachines 2012, 3 39

Output of the +x detector varies with respect to inc when finc is a constant frequency. Meanwhile,
output of the x detector exhibits variation with respect to inc as well. It is not a difficult task to
sketch the outputs of the x detector based on Figure 2, as negative inc for the x detector is
equivalent to positive inc for the +x detector. Since f0 and finc are close to each other, it is possible to
derive the value of inc by observing the outputs of the two detectors if the incident direction is not far
off the normal direction. If inc is too large, the outputs of both +x detector and x detector would
be too weak and hence unreliable. In order to enlarge the detectable range of inc, one feasible way is to
reduce the devices quality factors because lower quality factors lead to wider bandwidths for the
curves in Figure 2. Nevertheless, wider bandwidths unavoidably diminishes the detection sensitivity
for inc. Other than quality factors, another important design parameter is f. It is observed that, larger
f results in larger detectable range for inc. However, large f reduces the coupling efficiencies around
inc= 0. In Section 3, the devices performances with respect to various design parameters are shown by
some numerical results.

Figure 2. Illustration of the angle detectors rationale.

Output of +x detector (normalized)

inc = 4
1 inc = -4
inc = -6
0.8 inc = -2
inc = 2
inc = 0
0.6

0.4

0.2

0 Frequency
f f0 f 0 finc
f =
finc f0 f0

3. Numerical Results

In this section, some numerical results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the angle
detector described in the previous section. Specifically, the angle detector shown in Figure 1 is
simulated by MEEP [19], which is a full-wave solver based on FDTD method. MEEP has been widely
used to characterize various photonic devices, and its fidelity has been verified extensively [2022].
Micromachines 2012, 3 40

All the numerical results in this section are obtained with the following geometrical parameters:
= 1.065 m, s = 0.234 m, tg = 0.26 m, twg = 0.22 m, and tb = 2 m, (please refer to Figure 1 for
the definitions of these parameters; thickness of the substrate has negligible impact on the device,
according to our observations). The refraction index of box layer is 1.48; and, the other three layers are
made of silicon with refraction index 3.48. The incident light is a Gaussian beam with waist radius
23.4 and frequency finc= 0.646 c/a, where a = 1 m; in addition, electric field of the incident light is
polarized along y direction. The two detectors are modeled by integrating the Poynting vectors along
+x or x direction within the waveguide. As for each detector, coupling efficiency is defined as Pd/Pinc,,
where Pd is the detectors output and Pinc is calculated by integrating the incident lights power density
by the detectors aperture. As discussed in Section 2, our devices performance is dictated by two
major design parameters: quality factors and f. In the remainder of this section, various values of
these two design parameters are employed to adjust the angle detectors performance. The quality
factors are controlled by N, the number of grating elements (apparently, the larger N is, the higher the
quality factors are).
Outputs of the +x detector and x detector are plotted in Figure 3(a,b) respectively, with
f =0.88% and N=31. Since finc< f0 in our design, the x output is stronger than the +x output for
positive inc. The choice of f makesfinc coincide with the transverse resonant frequency of inc = 2 for
the x detector. As a result, when the ratio between x output and +x output is plotted in
Figure 3(c), it exhibits a steep increasing slope in range inc [0, 2]. When inc is negative, the two
detectors outputs would be exchanged: the ratio between +x output and x output exhibits a
steep slope in range inc [2, 0]. The data for negative inc are symmetric to those for positive inc,
hence are not shown in Figure 3. Therefore, from the two detectors outputs, inc can be reliably
derived when it falls in the range 2 < inc < 2.

Figure 3. Numerical results for the angle detector. (a) Coupling efficiency of the +x
detector. (b) Coupling efficiency of the x detector. (c) Ratio between the two detectors
outputs.
Coupling efficiency of +x detector

Coupling efficiency of -x detector

Ratio between the two detectors outputs

0.2 0.5 20

0.4
0.15 15
0.3
0.1 10
0.2
0.05 5
0.1

0 0 0
0 2 4 6 0 2 4 6 0 2 4 6
inc (degree) inc (degree) inc (degree)

(a) (b) (c)

As analyzed in Section 2, the detectable range for inc can be enlarged by reducing the quality
factors. This analysis is verified by numerical results in Figure 4. There are three curves in Figure 4.
One of them is the same as that in Figure 3(c), with N = 31. On the basis of the curve in Figure 3(c),
Micromachines 2012, 3 41

the other two curves in Figure 4 are obtained with N = 25 and N = 21. As expected, the reduction of N
diminishes the devices quality factors, and thus, increases the detectable range. To be specific, the
detectable range is [2, 2] when N = 31; it is increased to [2.5, 2.5] with N = 25 and further
increased to [3.5, 3.5] with N = 21. Nevertheless, the curves of N = 21 and N = 25 have smaller
slopes in the range [0, 2] compared to the slope of N = 31 curve, which means that lower quality
factors result in lower measurement sensitivity for inc.
Figure 5 serves to demonstrate the impact of f on the devices performance. One of the two curves
in Figure 5 is the same as that in Figure 3(c), where f =0.88%. The other curve in Figure 5 is
generated by increasing f to 1.03% and with all the other parameters unchanged. It is observed that,
the increase of f enlarges the detectable range from [2, 2] to [4, 4]. As a price, the coupling
efficiencies around inc = 0 drop with the increase of f. To be specific, the coupling efficiencies of
both detectors at surface normal incidence are 17% when f = 0.88%; and they drop to 11% when f
increases to 1.03%.

Figure 4. Numerical results for the angle detector with three different values of N.

35
Ratio between the two detectors outputs

30 N = 21

25
N = 25
20

15
N = 31
10

0
0 2 4 6
inc (degree)

In order to visualize our devices behavior better, field distributions are plotted in Figure 6 for
several incident angles. The field distribution plots in Figure 6 correspond to the f = 1.03% curve of
Figure 5. The device configuration is shown in Figure 6(a). The incident wave is a continuous wave at
finc = 0.645 c/a. In Figure 6(be), electric field Ey at a certain time moment is plotted, with four
different incident angles respectively. In Figure 6(be), the strongest positive field intensity is
represented by dark red color, the strongest negative field intensity is represented by dark blue color,
and white color stands for zero field intensity, as specified at the end of Figure 6. Two guided modes
(which are traveling toward +x and x directions, respectively) can be clearly identified in the
waveguide. When inc = 0, the two modes are equally strong. With the increase of incident angle, the
two modes become more and more unbalanced. When inc = 3, the x mode is much stronger than the
+x mode.
Micromachines 2012, 3 42

Figure 5. Numerical results for the angle detector with two different values of f.

25

Ratio between the two detectors outputs

20 f = 1.03%

15

10 f = 0.88%

0
0 2 4 6
inc (degree)

Figure 6. Field distribution plots with four different incident angles. (a) Device
configuration. (b) Field distribution plot with inc = 0. (c) Field distribution plot with
inc = 1. (d) Field distribution plot with inc = 2. (e) Field distribution plot with inc = 3.
z

Grating layer
Slab waveguide x
Box layer
Silicon substrate
(a)

(b) (c)

(d) (e)

Color chart for the field intensities in (b) (e)

Ey (V/m) -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

4. Conclusions

In this paper, a novel device is designed to detect the angle of a laser beam. It consists of a grating
layer on top of an SOI slab waveguide. The incident light is coupled into guided modes within the
waveguide via the grating layer, and the incident lights angle can be determined by reading the
Micromachines 2012, 3 43

outputs of light detectors within the waveguide. This device offers fast-responding on-chip detection of
laser beams angle, with detectable angle range far greater than conventional techniques like QPDs and
LEPs. Performance of the laser angle detector in this paper is demonstrated by full-wave FDTD
simulations. Numerical results show that the detectable angle range can be adjusted by several design
parameters and can reach [4, 4]. Efforts on experimental verification of the grating-based angle
detector are currently ongoing. According to our observations, it is challenging to achieve high
measurement accuracy with large detectable angle range. We are currently investigating an innovative
calibration scheme to improve the accuracy of angle measurement for our device.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported in part by US AFOSR MURI program under Grant FA9550-08-1-0337, by
AFRL CONTACT program under Grant FA8650-07-2-5061, and in part by US ARO under Grant
W911NF-09-1-0505.

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